XIL] JCjft Origin of S#m*s. 297 



whence two or more species have sprung, need in no 

 respect be intermediate between these species. If any 

 two species have arisen from a common stock in the same 

 way as the carrier and the pouter, say, have arisen from 

 the rock-pigeon, then the common stock of these two 

 species need be no more intermediate between the two 

 than the rock-pigeon is between the carrier and pouter. 

 Clearly appreciate the force of this analogy, and all the 

 arguments against the origin of species by selection, based 

 on the absence of transitional forms, fall to the ground. 

 And Mr. Darwin's position might, we think, have been 

 even stronger than it is if he had not embarrassed himself 

 with the aphorism, " Natura non facit saltum," which 

 turns up so often in his pages. We believe, as we have 

 said above, that Nature does make jumps now and then, 

 and a recognition 6f the fact is of no small importance 

 in disposing of many minor objections to the doctrine 

 of transmutation. 



But we must pause. The discussion of Mr. Darwin's 

 arguments in detail would lead us far beyond the limits 

 within which we proposed, at starting, to confine this 

 article. Our object has been attained if we have given 

 an intelligible, however brief, account of the established 

 facts connected with species, and of the relation of the 

 explanation of those facts offered by Mr. Darwin to the 

 theoretical views held by his predecessors and his con- 

 temporaries, and, above all, to the requirements of scien- 

 tific logic. We have ventured to point out that it does 

 not, as yet, satisfy all those requirements ; but we do not 

 hesitate to assert that it is as superior to any preceding 

 or contemporary hypothesis, in the extent of observational 

 and experimental basis on which it rests, in its rigorously 

 scientific method, and in its power of explaining biolo- 

 gical phsenomena, as was the hypothesis of Copernicus to 

 the speculations of Ptolemy. But the planetary orbits 



